


The Hitchhiker's Parable

by IvyBel



Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams, The Stanley Parable
Genre: Gen, behold my crossover that no one asked for, characters/relationships can and will be added later, some vague ocs because stanley parable does not have enough characters, starts as basically hitchhikers and slowly becomes more parable, summary is an excerpt because i couldn't think of anything better sue me, y'all this is so fun to write
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2019-11-18 12:52:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18121100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IvyBel/pseuds/IvyBel
Summary: 'Stanley liked to press buttons, and while everyone else on that planet were unhappy for most of the time, Stanley led a simple life, and therefore, Stanley was happy.The man had—well, was going to have—a problem, which was that his life was going to become much more complicated, and therefore a bit less happy, with a distinct lack of pushing buttons.'





	1. Prologue

This is the story of a man named Stanley.

 

Stanley lived in a tiny, insignificant part of the Galaxy right next to small, rather unimpressive yellow sun, of which he was a microscopic, completely inconsequential piece.

 

The planet that Stanley lived on was, give or take, ninety-two million miles from the previously mentioned sun, a blue and green planet that was mostly water despite some of it’s inhabitants not being able to swim. Stanley, in particular, liked to press buttons over and over again, which summarized the life forms of this planet rather well.

 

However, that is what Stanley liked to do, and while everyone else on that planet were unhappy for most of the time, Stanley led a simple life, and therefore, Stanley was happy.

 

The man had—well, was going to have—a problem, which was that his life was going to become much more complicated, and therefore a bit less happy, with a distinct lack of pushing buttons.

 

Just over two thousand years after a very popular man got nailed to a few planks of wood because he was too popular, a woman sitting on a park bench decided that the world was actually very boring despite people being nailed to things, and resolved to create a story with a world that was much more exciting and thoughtful.

 

This is not the story she came up with.

 

Because before she could figure out what her story was going to be like or who was going to be in it, another story started and cut her off before she could think too hard about it.

 

However, this is that other story, and this story involves Stanley.

 

Stanley was Employee #427 at the company where he worked, which was just as well given that there were many employees working at this company and many, many other Stanleys.

 

The reason this company existed in the first place was because, in simple terms, Earthmen were stupid. There were other reasons, like money, or power, but the former is the most significant, because the life forms of Earth were so irredeemably stupid that they wouldn’t have noticed if beings from other planets came down and used them to push buttons to turn a profit by slowly writing a book.

 

It was also for this reason that this exact event did happen.

 

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was not an Earth book, in fact it was never published anywhere on Earth, but sometimes other beings from other planets got rather lazy, and decided it was much easier to have other people update the guide for them instead of doing it themselves.

 

And so, despite the questionable legality of the practice, the company updated the guide, one letter at a time simultaneously from every one of its numerous employees, and one of those employees just happened to be Stanley.

 

And then one day, something very peculiar happened.

 

Something that would forever change Stanley.

 

Something he would never quite forget.


	2. Chapter 1

Office 427 was not extraordinary by any definition of the word. It was dimly lit, with beige walls and a slightly off-color white desk, with a greenish grey filing cabinet in the far corner. The only thing even slightly interesting about the room was the amount of papers stacked on the desk and on the floor, which mostly just made everything look even more dusty and dirty and overall mostly served to make everyone that ever set foot in that room feel uneasy.

 

The only person who that room didn’t make uneasy was Stanley, and that because Stanley happened to work in that office. He was actually rather happy in that office, because Stanley quite enjoyed his work.

 

That particular Wednesday afternoon, Stanley was in the process of getting fired. Not that he could’ve known that, of course, as the meeting was going on a floor or two above him while he was busy happily being at his keyboard.

 

In addition to the things that Stanley couldn’t possibly have known, he couldn’t have known that he was not the only one getting fired, nor that the meaning of ‘fired’ in this case was more literal than would normally been appropriate in this kind of situation.

 

So, on that very particular Wednesday afternoon, the owners of the company were arguing about the best way to wipe all of their assets and make their way to some far out planet in the Outer Eastern Rim without being caught.

 

Ideas ranged from just leaving and trusting that no one would ever want to come to this ridiculously dull planet and thus would never find out, all the way to just taking the humans with them and dealing with them later. Most of these ideas were horribly lazy, and designed specifically so that the owners didn’t actually have to do anything and that everything would sort itself out.

 

In this meeting, mostly against his will, was Stanley’s supervisor. This supervisor was, of course, not from Earth, though none of his employees seemed to notice, and if they did, they were decidedly too busy to do anything about it. In fact, he blended in rather well, resembling a thin greying man in his forties, with particularly sharp features and an expression that made you feel like he was annoyed that you even thought about existing. His main annoyance about himself was that his accent happened, by chance, to resemble a human British accent, and that tended to annoy him for some ungodly reason.

 

He was, at least by his merit, the most capable and knowledgeable being in the room. Despite this, when looking for a name that conveyed his supervisor role at the company, his research led him to pick “The Narrator” as a name that properly supported his ego, which was not a good translation or even a human name.

 

Right now, the Narrator was leaning back in his chair and feeling very uncomfortable with how this conversation was going. He came here to—though he’d never admit it, he was too proud—get rich. Destroying planets probably carried a longer and greater punishment, and he wasn’t sure he was comfortable with stakes that high.

 

There was another thing on his mind, something very irritating; Employee #427. Now, he wouldn’t describe himself as Stanley’s friend by any account, in fact Stanley rather irritated him most of the time, but it was not unlike imagining kicking a puppy. Stanley was a very stupid puppy, and the kicking was destroying his entire planet. It was enough to make the Narrator almost wince.

 

The Narrator decided that he didn’t want to sit in this meeting thinking about kicking puppies, and quietly slipped out while the others were cheerfully talking about the weather and the best way to perform genocide.

  
  


The Narrator had to admit, he was a bit surprised and mostly disappointed to find Stanley sitting and waiting at the outdated computer monitor for orders. He cleared his throat. “Stanley,” he practically sighed.

 

Stanley jumped, beaming. “Sir! Hello, sir! How’re you today?”

 

After taking a moment to reevaluate his choice in companion, the Narrator answered, “Hm? Oh, yes, fine. Are you busy, Stanley?”

 

For a few seconds Stanley glanced back at his computer, then back the Narrator, then back at the computer, and then back at the Narrator. “Not really, sir.”

 

“Good. Follow me then, won’t take long.” There was a sense of urgency to the Narrator’s voice as he glanced at the clock on Stanley’s office wall.

 

Stanley nodded, starting to stand up and take a few steps towards the door. “Where’re we going, sir?”

 

The Narrator hesitated. “Unrelated question, Stanley, but how do you feel about space?”


	3. Chapter 2

Being owner of a company that produced a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it could be reasonably assumed that the Narrator had one on his person at most times. However, this was the first time he’d ever consulted for any sort of lifesaving purpose, and he flipped through it vaguely hoping to find a page labelled, ‘How to Get off a Planet in less than Five Minutes.’ In fact there was an entry called exactly that, but the Narrator hadn’t gotten that far yet, and he probably wouldn’t get there in the five minutes before the Earth would no longer exist.

 

As Stanley and the Narrator climbed the long and bending staircases at a moderately severe pace, Stanley began to feel a little strange. At first he thought it might just be him out of breath, but as he thought about it, he realized there was something else, something he couldn’t explain.

 

“I--” Stanley began.

 

“Not to worry, it’s probably just the mind control wearing off,” the Narrator called back idly, eyes focused entirely on the screen.

 

Stanley blinked. “What?”

 

“Never mind, there’s plenty of time to worry about that later,” The Narrator sighed. “We need to speed up, we’ll never make it off at this rate.”

 

Was this was Wednesdays always felt like? If it was, Stanley had never noticed. In his opinion, it was rather exciting for a Wednesday. Usually Wednesdays were the same as Thursdays, or Fridays. Not exactly ‘running up stairs’ kind of days.

 

The Narrator cursed to himself in a language that was similar to a human tongue, but not quite. While Stanley only knew 26 letters, in the Narrator’s native tongue there were at least a thousand more besides that. As a matter of fact, the Narrator was from a planet that didn’t have any pronounceable name, but was known as “that place with a lot of strange intergalactic cafes,” which was recognizable to most, and was also known as a place where things became outdated very quickly. The language the Narrator was speaking was most likely considered archaic by now.

 

Stanley, on the other hand, was more concerned that the building appeared to be shaking just a little bit. “Um.”

 

“Yes, what is it, Stanley?”

 

“What’s going on, exactly?”

 

The Narrator paused to think about it, and then huffed. “The world’s going to end because your bosses have decided that they want it to, the pompous pricks, didn’t even ask my opinion beforehand before enacting their ‘master plan.’ You’d think I’d at least get a vote, wouldn’t you?”

 

“Oh.” Stanley frowned.

 

This was definitely an abnormally exciting Wednesday.

 

While the Narrator rambled to himself about the unfairness of modern company business practices, he decided to abandon the idea of finding anything useful in the guide and booked it up the stairs instead. Doing a bit of mental math, something his species was good at, he calculated that they needed to be at Floor 22 because that was the only way to get to Floor 23, and that they needed to be at Floor 23 in two minutes, which means they needed to be at Floor 22 right about now.

 

“Here!” the Narrator practically screeched. “This floor!”

 

Stanley followed the Narrator as he dashed onto Floor 22 and looked around like an alien trapped on a foreign planet that was about to be destroyed. They ran through and over various office cubicles, when they came to a set of two open doors.

 

The Narrator shouted, “left! Take the left!”

 

And so, as it happened, the Narrator ran through the door on the left, and Stanley ran through the door on the right.


	4. Chapter 3

While the Narrator’s plan was busy crumbling at the seams, a ship was busy gliding into position above the planet; a lone ship quietly examining the planet while it waited for a message.

 

The ship was curious, scanning as much of the planet as possible. Originally this particular ship model wasn’t designed to do such scanning, but as time went on it was decided that leaving a ship without a scanner was a very bad idea and offered everyone who had that model a refund. Unfortunately, most models of that ship had been destroyed due to not being able to scan what was in front of them, and one of the last remaining models was now circling a planet which, in a tragically ironic twist, wasn’t able to pick it up on any scanners made for that sort of thing.

 

Most scanners, at least. There was in fact one sensor that was picking up the craft’s position, but that sensor was locked securely in the Narrator’s office, which he hadn’t had time to go to before going to get his employee. There were a lot of things in the Narrator’s office that would have been helpful for this journey that the Narrator and Stanley found themselves on, if only the Narrator had thought to bring them. There was a bag, for one thing, which would have been useful, and a phone connected to a Universal Helpline, and there was a fern that if nothing else would have been nice to look at, and a host of other things that if used correctly might’ve been able to keep the planet from being destroyed in the first place.

 

The only device that was securely in the Narrator’s possession and was not in imminent danger of being destroyed was the remarkable and decidedly frustrating book known as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which was currently telling the Narrator all the fabulous and numerous uses of a towel, which the Narrator didn’t understand nor think could help them in this very specific situation.

 

Sitting abandoned on the Narrator’s desk, the tracker began beeping even louder.

 

It was only when the Narrator noticed a distinct lack of a second set of footsteps did he turn around and noticed a distinct lack of Stanley.

 

“Stanley?” he called, slowing to a stop. It hadn’t quite processed with him that his companion was somewhere unknown, so for a few precious seconds he just blinked at where Stanley had previously been. As his brain went through this startling information, several thoughts went through his head. ‘What happened?’ was the first one, which quickly turned into ‘where did he go?’ The third thought, with a bit more panic as the situation set in was, ‘I’ve lost him!’ The fourth thought concluding the train was ‘ _ He’s _ lost  _ me _ !’ and was punctuated by a furious yell. Stupid! Stupid! Why was this man so stupid?! The Narrator knew he should have invested in a baby leash.

 

Whatever. Whatever! It was fine! Assuming Stanley kept running and got back on track, the Narrator could meet up with him later. With the admittedly not so calming thought of relying on Stanley to do something useful, the Narrator turned and continued the way he was going before.

 

It took Stanley all the way to the Employee’s Lounge before he realized he may have made a wrong turn somewhere.

 

“Um.” Well, this was certainly disheartening. Stanley looked around, taking everything in. He was honestly not quite sure what he should be doing now. Reviewing his options, he reasoned he could go back, but despite popular belief he knew himself well enough to know that would probably just be more confusing. Another possible decision was just to stay in this room until something happened, but given that the world was apparently about to end, it was doubtful that anything had time to happen before that. That left the last option as the door on the opposite side of the room. Stanley didn’t quite know where that door led—truth be told he’d barely ever left his office—and that fact made him rather anxious about running through. Still, he reasoned, the world was ending soon, whatever was going to happen would probably have very temporary consequences.

 

Now, the moment Stanley ran through the door, several things happened throughout the universe. A little baby Jajjubuju got its wings, the only problem being that Jajubujus weren’t supposed to have wings and, assuming that it survived the summer, it would slowly change the species forever. In the same moment, a man was woken up before his alarm went off, and was severely unhappy to have been so and vowed revenge.

 

The more relevant coincidence was the owner of the craft currently above the Earth radioing in to ask if it was finally time to blow the damn thing up. The Earth, despite how pretty it might’ve looked, was actually very boring and and the pilot of the machine had other jobs to do. They got a cheery message back that amounted to the equivalent of ‘“eventually.” Truth be told, the pilot couldn’t stand these rich assholes that could do whatever they wanted. Unfortunately for them, they had made their business around doing exactly what rich assholes wanted, and they wanted money far more than they cared about the moral implications.

 

The Narrator wasn’t sure if he was happy to see Stanley, or whether he preferred to strangle him until his insides popped out. Stanley, meanwhile, was feeling rather pleased with himself after managing to make it all the way back.

 

“Right...right...” The Narrator rubbed his temple, convinced he was going to have the equivalent of a heart attack before they got anywhere further away from this idiotic planet. “Let’s get moving then, we don’t have time to waste, Stanley. Thanks for that, by the way.” He shot Stanley a sharp glance that bounced off Stanley like a foam dart and the two continued onto Floor 23.

 

On the ship/soon-to-be death machine, the intercom crackled to life to inform the pilot that everything was ready and if they wanted to blow up the planet now that would be alright by them. The pilot, who had just been prepared to sleep, huffed but obliged to align their ship into position. They weren’t getting paid enough for this.

 

“How much time do we have again?” Stanley called up to the Narrator, glancing out a couple windows. The realization that the world was ending hadn’t hit him yet, and for right now he was in a very relaxed state of shock.

 

“Not enough!” the Narrator yelled back, and Stanley decided not to ask again.

 

Despite the urgency of the two, the rest of the planet was blissfully unaware of the impending destruction that was about to befall them, right up until the Earth began to shake and the ground began to crumble.

 

‘Of all the people they could’ve gotten to destroy this oversized rock, it of course had to be Chrim Halfrunt,’ the Narrator thought as he wedged open a door. “Come on, Stanley,” he snapped, and Stanley followed him. The situation was beginning to catch up with Stanley’s brain, and he was beginning to feel a little more uneasy. Perhaps it was the stress getting to him, or maybe it was the mind control wearing off even more. Either way, it wasn’t going to matter very, very soon.

 

Back in his ship, Chrim Halfrunt thought about making a speech, this was a planet after all, there were billions and billions of lifeforms to listen. He didn’t get an audience like that very often. On the other hand, he wasn’t quite sure what he would say. He hovered his hand over the controls that would utterly destroy this tiny blue and green ball, before figuring that if no one else was going to, he might as well deliver a needed message.

 

All across the Earth, various devices turned themselves on, tuning to a frequency that they had never tuned to before and would likely never tune to again. A man’s voice drifted through, soft as if singing a lullaby.

 

“Goodbye, Earth.”

 

There was a pause, and then a frankly terrible spectacle of the planet turning itself inside out, and then the small spacecraft glided away.


	5. Chapter 4

Meanwhile, actually fairly close to what was going on, Zaphod Beeblebrox zipped across solar systems, looking for something very specific.

 

It is theorized that for every being born in the Galaxy, there are at least three more beings born with the same name, appearance, and general demeanor. The Galaxy, realizing that it’s just done the equivalent of accidentally pressing Ctrl V too many times, sends the requests for termination to the Universal Paradoxal Agency, which covers at least one sector of the Galaxy. Whoever survives the longest becomes the first and only bearer of that identity. The UPA were the best at what they did, simply because they were the only ones that did it, and the Galaxy was usually safe from this frequent and annoying error.

 

For example, there were currently at least two beings named Zaphod Beeblebrox, one of them President of the Imperial Galactic Government, and one who was on a grand quest to find nothing.

 

The fact that Zaphod Beeblebrox was searching for nothing was very inconvenient for him, as despite the expression of “the vastness of space,” it’s surprisingly hard to actually find a place where there is truly nothing there, what with all the stars and planets and rocks and such.

 

The ship wasn’t exactly the best ship, to be fair, but after having it for a whole two hours, Zaphod was beginning to consider it home. There was no reason he should’ve picked this ship in particular, except it was shiny and something about it just pulled him towards stealing it. In that regard there was a reason, only he couldn’t remember it and right now didn’t care to. By coincidence, it also happened to be his two hundredth birthday, but he couldn’t remember or care about that either.

 

Zaphod Beeblebrox was known as a sort of lost soul mostly because when your impossible sort of clone is president of the Galaxy, life gets less exciting by comparison. The people that knew him would’ve described him as insane, delusional, overall completely bananas, and infuriatingly functional despite all that.

 

Seeing a familiar ship cruising past, Zaphod signaled to it. The ship hesitated before slowing down, allowing the communication channel to open after a considerable pause.

 

“Hi,” he cooed.

 

No response, although if Zaphod listened carefully, he could faintly hear blood pressure rising. There was nothing more annoying than a man who wasn’t a politician, but acted like he should be one anyway.

 

“H--” Zaphod started to try again, but he was cut off by the occupant of the other ship, who decided that he wasn’t willing to sit through the various greetings that Zaphod was going to give until he was answered.

 

“Hello, Zaphod!” Chrim Halfrunt said cheerfully, wishing nothing more than for Zaphod to immediately drop down dead at this very moment. “How are you doing today?”

 

“The better question, Chrim, is what I’m doing today!” The way Zaphod spoke often conveyed grand gestures, even if there were none, as if he was giving some sort of speech about whatever happened to be on his minds. Needless to say, the topics tended to be rather bizarre.

 

“Oh.” There was a silence, and then an audible sigh. “What are you doing today, then?”

 

“Absolutely nothing!” Zaphod grinned, even with the knowledge that Chrim couldn’t see it.

 

“Do I want to know?” Chrim sighed again, resigned to his fate that if Zaphod wanted to have this conversation, there was nothing that could stop him.

 

Zaphod leaned closer to the com system. “Yes,” he insisted.

 

“Please,” Chrim muttered, “tell me then.”

 

“I have decided to devote my life to finding nothing! Absolutely nothing! The true nothing!”

 

Chrim felt a migraine coming on. “Wow.”

 

“Exactly!” Zaphod said triumphantly. “I figure everyone can find something, but not many people can find nothing!”

 

Back on Delta B839, when Chrim was being trained, his teacher had the infuriating habit of escaping conversations by making you focus on something else and then leaving before you realized your mistake. Looking back on it now, Chrim was certain that the practice was specifically made to defend against conversations with Zaphod Beeblebrox.

 

“I just blew up a planet, maybe you can find nothing there.”

 

“Excellent suggestion! I’ll note it down!”

 

“You better go quickly, there might not be nothing there for long,” Chrim urged.

 

As Zaphod happily scooted away, Chrim reflected that he might just be the luckiest being in the Galaxy at the moment. No, he thought, maybe not the luckiest. Beeblebrox might be the luckiest, given that he was somehow still alive.

  
  


Unbeknownst to Chrim Halfrunt, neither of them were the luckiest or second luckiest beings in the Galaxy, as that honor in that moment belonged to the Narrator and Stanley, although their luck was proving to be going a bit stale the more time ticked forward.

 

“Mm, yes, well. This plan really didn’t have a part two, did it?” the Narrator muttered, glancing around the small hijacked spacecraft, which was less a spacecraft and more of a pod designed for getting people off the planet and then getting picked up by a bigger ship that was actually made for spacecrafting.

 

Stanley was clearly very confused, but grappling so much with the sudden disappearance of gravity that the Narrator decided to just leave him be and explain things to him later.

 

The Narrator floated over to the various sensors of the not-spacecraft. He was used to the lack of gravity; it was considered a quirky trait of some of the cafes on his world, although those weren’t very popular as food and drinks don’t tend to react well to low gravity, and usually just made a huge mess. He had worked in one when he was younger, a job he now wished he had kept, since it meant he wouldn't be here.

 

Yes, as he’d expected. Nothing. The problem with being in the ruins of a destroyed planet was not many people tend to stop by for a chat, especially not with Earthlings. Not many people had heard of them and, in the Narrator's not so humble opinion, that was the way it should it. Well, would be.

 

As if it might suddenly make the machine work, the Narrator hit it like a stuck vending machine. There was really no logic behind the action, but if he had to be stuck in this relatively cramped space with a man who was currently floating uselessly around, well, this machine had to suffer too.

 

"Now, Stanley," he glanced behind him, "please don't pull things off the walls, you might break something."

 

Stanley, unknowingly free from any control that made him needlessly complacent, found himself rather indignant.

 

"Well, I am just sort of...floating here," he said, attempting to sound at least a little peeved but instead sounding more like a child who'd just been forced into a photo booth.

 

"You know, I really think you would find being quiet to be in your best interest here, Stanley." The Narrator focused back on the sensors. He silently mused that if Stanley ever had a story based around him, it would probably either be rather boring, or would feature Stanley dying over and over again. The latter sounded nice in moments like these.

 

As if reacting to that brief daydream, the sensor pinged, indicating the presence of a ship that was approaching much faster than perhaps the Narrator was ready for.

 

The Narrator spun around and grabbed Stanley's arm, pushing buttons despite his companion's feeble complaints.

 

"I sincerely hope you like warping, Stanley. Try not to throw up on me."


	6. Chapter 5

Stanley did not like warping.

 

In fact, with the mind control newly worn off and with the new ability to find things unpleasant, warping had possibly become one of his least favorite sensations. The ground seemed to sway under his feet, and before he realized it he was sitting on the floor. The room was dark, and had that feeling not unlike stepping into another dimension, and then being promptly punched in the guts.

 

The Narrator, meanwhile, stretched and looked around with a critical eye. Crates, cramped, some kind of hold? Then again, this was all information that he was getting through methods from detective stories he’d read on Earth, so maybe not.

 

“At least you didn’t throw up,” he muttered, glancing at Stanley, who feebly managed a thumbs up. The gesture might’ve been funny to anyone that liked Stanley more than the Narrator did at this moment.

 

Instead, the Narrator reached down and grabbed Stanley’s arm and attempted to pull him to his feet. “Anyways, come on, Stanley—”

 

Stanley felt his stomach lurch, and everything in his mind told him that he stood, he was going to actually die.

 

“No no no no no,” Stanley gasped, giving a strangled laugh and smile. “No.” He pulled against the Narrator’s admittedly much stronger grip. “I’d...I’d rather stay on the ground, thank you.”

 

The Narrator gave him a puzzled look, which quickly turned into annoyance when he realized that Stanley was actively working against him. “Stanley,” he replied through gritted teeth, “we need to leave this room.”

 

“Just give me a minute!”

 

“A minute—Your life is nothing but minutes!” The Narrator gave another hard pull on Stanley’s arm. “Will you please just stand up?”

 

“Can’t.”

 

“Yes, you can, you didn’t even lose your legs in the warp!”

 

“That can happen?” Stanley yelped.

 

“Of course it can happen, it’s a warp!” Narrator gestured with his free hand as if the warp was metaphorically right beside him. “You could lose anything in that!”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me that?!” Stanley cried.

 

“I was a bit busy, Stanley!” the Narrator yelled.

 

“It’s not that big of a risk,” Zaphod pointed out.

 

“That’s right!” The Narrator gave Stanley a triumphant look, to which Stanley retaliated with one of childish anger.

 

In the midst of their first and definitely not last argument, it took them both a few minutes to realize that neither of them had, in fact, made that last point, and slowly they glanced over at the doorway, where a man with two heads and third arm was grinning.

 

“Hi fellas! Welcome to my ship!” he said. “You two are my prisoners now!”

  
  


Zaphod Beeblebrox rather liked hitchhikers, actually. The idea of running around and being in at least mild danger all the time suited Zaphod as a person quite wonderfully, and if he’d had an attention span of more than five seconds maybe he would’ve considered it.

 

The one and only reason that he’d declared these two hitchhikers (well, they didn’t look like hitchhikers, but they’d hitchhiked, so it counted) his prisoners, was because that kind of dramatic gesture was just the type he liked to do. Besides, he thought, he wouldn’t be a very good ship owner if he didn’t take intruders prisoner.

 

The Narrator looked rather unimpressed despite Zaphod’s best efforts. “You are, are you?”

 

“Yes, I am!” Zaphod said, proudly.

 

Stanley looked between the Narrator and this new person. Well, he assumed it was a person. The culture shock hadn’t quite hit him yet, and at that moment, he was still trying to process that, while the Narrator was speaking in English, the other person definitely was not, unless Stanley was having some sort of stroke from the warp, which was just as likely, and oh. This was a new sensation.

 

The Narrator looked back at him for a moment. “Stanley,” he said sternly, “stop panicking.”

 

Despite thinking of one hundred retorts that involved combinations of ‘I’m not panicking’, and ‘of course I’m panicking,’ Stanley couldn’t manage to force any of them out of his throat, leaving the Narrator and Zaphod to continue their terse conversation while he grappled with life itself.

 

“So,” Zaphod continued, glancing at Stanley once before deciding to ignore him, “why  _ are _ you on my ship?”

 

“We’re your prisoners,” said the Narrator.

 

“No, before that.”

 

“We hitchhiked onto your ship.”

 

“No, I know that,” Zaphod shook his heads, “we’re way past that. I mean, what led you to the action of hitchhiking on my ship and therefore becoming my prisoners, but that wasn’t either of those events?”

 

Remembering how much jail time that he could be in for the time he’d spent on Earth extorting forced labor out of the natives, the Narrator shrugged.

 

“Holiday?”

 

Zaphod blinked. His heads glanced at each other, as if conducted a silent brainstorming conversation. Finally, they nodded. “Yeah, okay. That makes sense.”

 

Stanley, still only able to hear half the conversation, was definitely having a stroke.

 

“What’s wrong with him?” Zaphod nodded at Stanley like he was a particularly sick dog.

 

The Narrator sighed, “first time on...holiday.”

 

To be fair, that statement was technically true, but if this was a holiday, then Stanley wasn’t sure he wanted to be on it ever again. Regardless, he gave the two headed man a weak halfhearted wave, with a faint greeting to go along with it.

 

“Oh. Well. Anyway.” Zaphod took a moment to sort his admittedly few thoughts. So he had two prisoners now, that was nice. Wasn’t sure what he was going to do with them, but they were nice to have. He also had a ship, which was probably more important than the prisoners. He’d gotten so excited with the prisoners, he’d forgotten what he’d come here for. It was like the thought went out for lunch. Maybe it had, thoughts have funny ways of going on break when one isn’t using them. Sensing that it was needed, the thought, affectionately named Inutilia for the moment, slowly tottered back into Zaphod’s brain.

 

“Say!” said Zaphod, eyes lighting up, “have either of you seen nothing, by any chance?”

 

“I beg your pardon?” said the Narrator. He’d been crouching beside Stanley while this mysterious stranger stared off into space for a minute or two.

 

“Have you seen nothing?”

 

For once, the Narrator had to take a moment to really  _ listen  _ to the question, and decode it part by part. “Have I seen...nothing?”

 

“Exactly!”

 

“Well, uh...” For a moment the Narrator was tempted to say yes, of course he had, every time he closed his eyes. On the other hand, he was afraid the next question would be where, and he didn’t want to encourage crazy people like that. And this strange, strange being was definitely a crazy person.

 

The Narrator shook his head, getting back to his feet. “No, no crazy— I mean, no nothing here. Right, Stanley?” He shot Stanley a very pointed look.

 

Stanley nodded, not sure what exactly he was agreeing to, but hoping that it was a way out of this very existence.

 

“Not a smart one, is he?” Zaphod said, looking at Stanley as he curled back up into a ball.

 

“No, not really. Do you have a Babel fish on you, by any chance?” The Narrator thought about it some more, and added, “and maybe a chair with some straps to go along with it?”

 

“I’ve got a fish and a seat with a seatbelt, does that work?”

 

The Narrator dusted himself off a little. “I suppose it’ll have to do. Come on, Stanley,” he called back.

 

Zaphod had his signature grin on his face, which tended to make even the most restrained of creatures want to punch him in the face. The Narrator was one of these creatures, and he really wanted to punch Zaphod in the face. Possibly the only reason he didn’t was thinking about the mess he’d have to clean up later.

 

Stanley feebly got to his feet, knees buckling a little but relatively steady when leaning on the wall. Seeing that both humans—he didn’t have any reason to assume that the Narrator wasn’t—were operational and functioning, Zaphod led them out of the dark room and into a hallway.

 

“Good god,” the Narrator said, looking around. Stanley nodded absentmindedly in agreement.

 

“It’s...something,” Stanley said.

 

Zaphod beamed. “Nice colors, aren’t they?”


	7. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summer’s over, you know what that means; back to my strange crossover no one asked for

Stanley didn’t enjoy the fish either, but as he thought about it later he didn’t really have a choice in the matter. He didn’t have much to do but think, which was maybe the scariest part of all this. Besides the destruction of the Earth, the man with two heads, and the fact that he was currently sitting on a seat that was the most horrifying shade of pink he’d ever seen.

 

He groaned quietly in relatively mild frustration—he wasn’t quite used to feeling frustrated yet—and leaned his head back, listening to the Narrator and the two-headed man argue a bit behind him about color theory.

 

(“Yes, but why green?” the Narrator pushed.)

 

(“I think it looks nice,” Zaphod replied, sounding deeply offended for a man that chose lime green as the wall color of his ship.)

 

Stanley tried to focus on that through the headache that was beginning to form through thinking too hard. The man had only begun to think a relatively short time ago, and he was already being forced to think about the destruction of everything he ever knew. It was not a good day, and there wasn’t even such a thing as a day anymore.

 

“Do I even exist?” he wondered out loud, causing the stimulating conversation behind him to falter.

 

At first he thought they were just going to ignore him, but finally the Narrator curtly responded, “I appreciate you having your first existential crisis, Stanley, but if you could do it in your head that would be even better.”

 

The Narrator was also not having a good no-longer-day, admittedly not only because of Stanley, but mostly because of Stanley. He wouldn’t have had a better day without Stanley, mind you, but it would at least have been less stressful. Having to worry about a human in space was less fun than having to worry about literally any other Earth creature in space. Like a mouse. Or a whale.

 

He stepped over and tapped Stanley’s chair in a repetitive and deeply annoying motion while gazing out the window, like he was thinking about how much trouble it would be to just brainwash Stanley again and then repaint the walls while Zaphod wasn’t looking. He decided the chances weren’t great, so he stopped tapping and made a new plan.

 

“You,” he declared, turning to Zaphod (who he didn’t quite remember the name of), “how far is it to anywhere with food?”

 

“You want to find  _ something _ ?” asked Zaphod, as if this was quite a peculiar concept to him.

 

“Yes. Preferably something that you can feed to a very very fragile being.” He glanced at Stanley. “So, not DI-68, I think that would be too much.” (The food of DI-68 was made to eat the eater back, which was a terrible thrill for the inhabitants. One of them had in the past introduced a pineapple to Earth, and that was an entire mess. The Narrator didn’t care to watch Stanley explode right now, or learn his opinion of pineapple on pizza.)

 

Zaphod hummed and walked over to the console, studying the controls. “Well, I’ve never used them to find something before. I think they can probably do it.”

 

“Probably,” the Narrator echoed back in semi-mock encouragement.

 

“We may have to jump into hyperspace.”

 

“Maybe.” The Narrator said, in the same tone as before.

 

Stanley was beginning to think that he really didn’t have any stake in this conversation, but he tried to give his thoughts a voice anyway. “Is that dangerous?” he asked, trying to settle the bad feeling in his gut that was starting to float up again.

 

The two, predictably, ignored his valuable input completely.

 

“I’ll start it, if you tell me what the buttons are,” the Narrator said, striding over to the panel. Truth be told, he was anxious to regain a form of control over this entire situation, even if that control was practically taking over this ugly ship.

 

“I said, is this dangerous?” Stanley tried again. He figured somewhere in his heart he knew that he didn’t really want to know the answer, but the other part of him wanted someone to lie to him and tell him that of course, Stanley, everything’s going to be fine, and this is all a dream and you’ll wake up very very soon.

 

Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, because someone pressed a button, and then the bottom of the universe fell out.

  
  


Stanley didn’t like going through hyperspace either.

 

Maybe it’s worth describing the feeling of one’s organs floating apart from each other. Or one’s soul being temporarily displaced from the body. Maybe it’s more worth describing the idea of the universe folding over itself like an origami swan in an experience that was reminiscent of the THX logo before a movie.

 

But, we all know how hyperspace works, so the important thing was that Stanley didn’t appreciate it very much.

 

“Wake up. Wake up, Stanley. You’re taking up the floor.”

 

The Narrator’s voice floated through what may have been left of Stanley’s brain. Stanley groaned, shifting and discovering that at some point he had indeed ended up on the cold floor. He wasn’t really sure which was worse, the idea that he’d presumably freaked out enough to fall out of his chair in front of other people, or the fact that all his muscles felt agonizingly sore.

 

“You aren’t supposed to tense up,” snapped the Narrator as Stanley’s eyes fluttered open to see him looming, in enough of a crouch to show some form of compassion but not enough to actually get close to him. “Tensing up makes it worse, Stanley. Try to be a little more mindful next time.”

 

Of course, all that clever planning of the Narrator’s subtle actions was lost on Stanley, who was preoccupied thinking about how much time it would take to never do that again. “Where are we...?” he choked out, then changed his mind and asked instead, “why are we doing this?”

 

The Narrator paused. “We’re getting food.”

 

“I don’t want to eat!” Stanley practically screeched at him, although given his current state it came out more like a quiet sob.

 

“Oh dear. Stanley, must you have a tantrum now of all places?” the Narrator sighed as Stanley curled himself into a ball. Zaphod, who was watched with muted interest from the front of the ship, raised one of his eyebrows, and the Narrator cleared his throat. “He’s, erm...had a bit of a fright, it’s just the shock I think. I don’t suppose that you have a bucket of water somewhere I could...I don’t know, throw on him?”

 

Zaphod shrugged, pointing out of the window of the bridge towards the Vogon ship drifting just outside. “Maybe you could ask them.”

 

The Narrator nodded, and turned back to Stanley. “Right, right, good idea.”

 

There was a long silence.

 

“You,” the Narrator finally said, looking up at Zaphod again.

 

“Mm?”

 

“What?”

 

“What?” Zaphod said back with marked casualness.

 

“Why is there a Vogon ship outside the window?”

 

“That’s not a ‘what’ question, that’s a ‘why’ question.” At a glare from the Narrator, Zaphod glanced out the window back towards it and added, “I don’t know. It was just there.”

 

The Narrator thought about this for a moment. “But they weren’t on the sensors when we warped.”

 

“Nope,” said Zaphod

 

“But they are now.”

 

“Yep.”

 

“So they followed us?”

 

“Probably.”

 

“So they’re not friendly.”

 

“Probably not.”

 

The Narrator stood up, looking with annoyance out of the window, vaguely hoping the gesture would strike the captain of the other ship dead. “Great. I suppose we’ll have to eat after this, then.”


	8. Chapter 7

To tell you about Vogons would probably be to tell you what you already know. Of course, in the story you already know, at this point poetry would also be in the picture. Unfortunately, right now it would completely out of context.

 

That being said, we might as well get a small summary out of the way, so if the story ever gets there—and there’s a chance it might not after all, in the interest of speeding us along—you’ll know exactly what these three are dealing with.

  
  


Vogon poetry is of course the fourth worst in the Universe.

 

The third worst is that of the Azagoths of Kria, who unfortunately would still exist until someone managed to survive and kill them, which wouldn’t be for another seven years. 

 

The second worst was by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings, who unlike the Azagoths actually was dead, as the planet Earth currently had a nasty infliction of no longer existing.

 

The very worst poetry of all time was created by Stanley, age 6 and a half, with a bunch of fridge magnets he’d gotten for his fifth birthday and spent three days messing with to create some of the worst literature ever known.

  
  


Stanley and the Narrator warped onto the ship, and had to admit that Zaphod’s bizarre color schemes had nothing compared to this damp musty basement of a vessel. Stanley had recovered from his brief mental breakdown, and was back to thinking about how much he didn’t want to be here. He had no idea of the repercussions that would arise from having his first thoughts be terribly unpleasant as these, but if the Uuns of Katu were anything to go off of, it couldn’t be anything good.

 

To understand this, you’re going to need a bit more background, sorry.

 

When the Universe created the Uuns, it had no possible idea that it was creating creatures that had the worst luck in the Galaxy, to start. It was a miracle that they lived at all, because when they went to eat things from trees, the trees would set on fire, when they fished the fish would always have some deadly poison, and when they tried to eat each other they found that they never had enough salt.

 

At some point, the Universe realized its mistake and attempted to fix it, giving the Uuns the best luck in the Galaxy. The Uuns, however, had gotten used to a certain lifestyle, and proceeded to spend their existence sabotaging themselves at ever turn.

 

The life of an Uun, in conclusion, is very much made of negative thinking, which was quickly being rivaled by Stanley, who was wondering if there were windows he could jump out of. The answer was no, because this was a ship, and if there were any windows to jump out of, he would never fall as far as he wanted.

  
  


“Steady,” the Narrator said, glancing at Stanley. “We have to do this fast, before they spot us.”

 

“What exactly are we doing?” Stanley asked.

 

“Have you ever read a pirate story, Stanley?”

 

Stanley had to think about it. “No...?”

 

“Good, because this is nothing like that. Come on.”

 

The Narrator forced open the door, and motioned for Stanley to follow him out of the basement into a hallway that was equally as foul and moldy. The dark colors did not help.

 

Stanley decided to try again. “You didn’t answer my question.”

 

“You wouldn’t understand it,” the Narrator said, “and keep your voice down.”

 

Stanley would have argued, except he had a vague feeling that he really wouldn’t understand it after all, and that whatever happened in a pirate story was probably better than this too.

 

The fact was, Vogons ships had a component in them that the Narrator rather wanted. It would’ve been hard to explain what it was to a human like Stanley. Vogon warps are slightly different from regular warps, as they tend to run on pure bloodymindedness. When the Vogons were inventing warp power, the universe tried to keep them as ar away from it as possible, in the fear that the Vogons would destroy more things besides their planet, and that people would actually have to look at them.

 

In response, the Vogons basically brute forced their way into proper space travel by creating a system that basically rips a crude hole in time and space. Unfortunately for everyone else, when you don’t follow the rules, you aren’t limited by logic. In that way, Vogon warping was a much superior method to the standard.

 

It was this component the Narrator desired, for complicated reasons of both self-preservation and a little bit of pragmatic greed.

  
  


The two creeped through the dark hallways, looking for...something. Stanley wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but he imagined something space-like. Maybe with buttons. Stanley liked buttons. Did they have proper buttons in space? This was an important question to Stanley, but he feared it wasn’t the right time.

 

“Shouldn’t we have run into something by now?” Stanley asked instead, once he was sure that enough polite silence had passed.

 

The Narrator sighed. “Stanley?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Do you perhaps know what ‘jinxing’ is? It’s a delightful concept, I’ll explain it to you now.”

  
  


Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was not having a good day, which was very typical for a Vogon. However, he was having an especially bad day, which was a feat in and of itself. He had been all set to destroy a planet, and then the planet just gets blown up by someone else. Some people had no respect for Vogons that did a hard day’s work, or Vogons at all for that matter. Not that the Vogons cared, but any reason to yell at someone was good enough for them.

 

Therefore, when the sensors picked up two entities on the ship, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz did not hesitate to order them to be captured, because once again, any reason to yell at someone was good enough for a Vogon.

  
  


When the Vogons rounded the corner, Stanley immediately decided that he didn’t like Vogons. He was polite enough to not say it to their faces, but shared a look with the Narrator that indicated that they were both on the same page.

 

To be fair, the Vogons didn’t like them either. “You! Hitchhikers!” one of them barked. In reality, none of them actually knew if the two were hitchhikers or not, but throwing hitchhikers out of the airlock was much more fun than throwing out random people.

 

“We’re not hitchhikers!” The Narrator bit back, properly offended by the implication.

 

The Vogons seemed to pause for a minute.

 

“What are you then?”

 

“We’re, ah...Stanley, what are we doing?”

 

“Erm...” Stanley thought for a moment. “I mean, technically we’re hitchhiking...?”

 

The Narrator hissed, “a different word please, Stanley!”

 

“We’re, um...” Stanley didn’t know that many fancy words off the top of his head, and tried to think about things that the Narrator had said in the past to him. “...meandering?”

 

The Narrator deemed this acceptable enough work to turn back to the Vogons. “Yes! We are meandering! Simply wandering in a vaguely hitchhiker-like fashion!” He made a gesture with his hands, hoping to help his point.

 

The Vogons thought about this, slightly downcast at the idea that their current prey weren’t actually hitchhikers.

 

“Alright,” the one in the front finally said, “but we’re still going to throw you out.”

 

“What?!” the Narrator seethed, “why?!”

 

“Well, we can’t just let you run around, can we? Even if you’re not hitchhikers, you’re still intruders.” The Vogons nodded in agreement.

 

“Oh, since when are Vogons that smart?! You all are terrible Vogons!” The Narrator pointed accusingly at them, as if the universe would finally fix its mistake once and for all.

 

The group of Vogons looked at each other and shrugged, before moving to apprehend the new prisoners.

 

“Hey, here’s an idea,” one Vogon said aside to another, “why don’t we tell the Prostetnic that they’re hitchhikers anyway? Maybe he’ll read them some poetry.”

 

The Narrator backed up a little. “New plan, Stanley! Run!”

 

“I thought we trying to talk to them!” Stanley yelped.

 

“That’s why running is the new plan! Now run!”

 

The Narrator grabbed Stanley’s arm, and ran down the hallway away from the Vogons, who started in pursuit.


End file.
